Let the Games Begin
by psiten
Summary: Give Nokoru an excuse, and he'll give you a festival - with all the world's ninja elite, which is naturally where Pirate King Fai sends Kamui this week. "When a purple ball rolled out, Kamui felt a Level 5 premonition of impending doom, although he couldn't say why. Then he saw the second screen left of center come up, and recognized the butterfly." (15 Mokona #7, all CLAMP x-over)
1. Opening Ceremonies

_**DISCLAIMER:**__ All CLAMP stories were created by CLAMP. Characters have been adapted without authorization or approval, and I am making no profit from their use._

"Let the Games Begin" is the seventh story in my Pirates vs. Ninjas alternate universe, "Fifteen Mokona on a Dead Man's Chest". **Reading the previous stories is not required.** That said, if you would like to read the stories in order to take advantage of the continuity, details are on my profile page.

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**[Opening Ceremonies]**

A day's hike into ninja territory wasn't somewhere Captain Doumeki Shizuka liked to be without at least a few of his crew, or any idea of where he was going; but he had his crossbow and bolts to spare, and the one traveling companion he did have could (so Doumeki had heard) blast an ambush to smithereens by raising his hand. When the Pirate King had dropped onto his boat (literally - Fai'd done some spinning vault from the _Dragon of Heaven_'s main mast top to the _Queen Cassandra_'s fo'c'sle), his bargain had been that Doumeki would guard Lord Shirou Kamui on a mission to go someplace and get something ("Kamui will take care of all the details when he gets there, don't worry!" "Take care of what details?! You haven't told me anything either, you bastard! Why the fuck do you keep doing this to me? You'd better not be sneaking off to have sex with Kurogane again, I swear on all that's- hey! Where are you going?!") in exchange for a complete repair and refit for his ship on the Pirate King's dime. It was a good deal, even if Death Shirou didn't need a bodyguard. Doumeki was pretty damn sure the only reason he was here was so his fleet admiral had someone to talk to.

"-second time this month that fucking fripp-frappety fop has packed me off somewhere asinine and dangerous without any explanation or warning."

"Huh."

"Last time it was a fucking _bad joke_ of a volcano that shot me halfway around the world to a frozen island surrounded by ghosts, where I had to camp with a ninja for two days, and the ninja was the best part of it! Don't tell anyone I said so, but the ninja - her name's Hikaru - she was all right. But _His Grace_ was off in the tropics, screwing around with fucking Kurogane, and I swear if I ever see that ninja jackass again - I mean Kurogane, not Hikaru, Hikaru's fine - I swear I will punch him right in his unreasonably attractive face."

"Hmm."

Lord Shirou had shown him the sex points ledger that detailed exactly how the Pirate King had overshot Doumeki's own score by almost fifty thousand, confirming everything Doumeki had assumed when he'd seen that week's leaderboard. Watanuki had been fit to bust (horrified and twitchy, in the cute way) the first time he'd asked if a ninja was sleeping with the Pirate King. Maybe there'd be explosions next time he was in Hundhammeren and got to tell his lover-in-denial which ninja it'd been. Hopefully this mission wouldn't put him off too long. The detour south to the docks at Bresken had already pulled him off his routes.

"Never would've even met him if Fai hadn't kidnapped Sakura for fuck-knows-why last month. That was the only reason Tomoyo sicced her personal ninja-out-of-legend bodyguard on our boat. I swear, this summer's been a ninja-ridden hell because of that asshole dandy - Fai, I mean - and he's the only one who knows why he's done it! Well, maybe Subaru knows..." Shirou's face turned pained as mentioned the Sumeragi, whom Doumeki had seen fight just once, and after that had steered as far clear as he could. The man seemed nice enough, but he clearly wanted nothing to do with anyone and Doumeki respected that. His magic, though... The memory of standing near it made Doumeki's skin prickle. Power like that wasn't human.

They walked a few paces in silence, and when Shirou picked up, it was almost in a whisper. "But it's not Subaru's fault. It's Fai's fucking fault, and he is _the worst at explaining_."

"Yup," Doumeki agreed, stealing a glance at the directions in Lord Shirou's hand. They were just about finished with the instruction to go three thousand and six paces East from a rock shaped like a straight razor. Supposedly, that'd land them at a path where they'd go left, and at the end of it they'd see wherever they were heading.

"I'm sorry, am I boring you?" Shirou asked in a voice that was anything but sorry.

"Nope. Just, if we're raiding ninja, I wish it was in Hundhammeren. I've got someone."

"Right. Because everybody's got a ninja boyfriend now."

"He says he's a popcorn vendor."

"Which may be the most transparent ninja cover story I've ever heard!"

"It's part of why he's cute."

"Well, I wish you could've dropped in, too. You're the only hope I've got of someone beating Fai's score this year as long as he keeps fucking Kurogane all over the place."

"I'm not sleeping with Watanuki to win anything."

"That doesn't mean you _shouldn't_ win."

"Ah. I found the path."

Their three thousand and sixth pace had dropped them through a line of trees, on a dirt trail that looked endless in both directions. They went left, and there were no instructions after that - which Shirou grumbled about for the next half hour (along with saying how he missed Princess Kotori back in Kaizuka, and her brother Fuuma, too - Lord Monou of the _Dragon of Earth_ to pirate captains who weren't on a first name basis with the prince - so now Doumeki'd won the Kamui Bingo game Fai had slipped him). When they finally reached a road sign, it read "Welcome to Kragero". It figured, tromping through ninja woods, they'd be headed for a ninja stronghold. He hadn't realized it'd be one that major. Doumeki felt Shirou's anger a split second before fluffy, white feathers started falling out of the sky over their heads.

Doumeki snapped one up between two fingers. "You're doing it again."

Shirou grabbed the feather, quashing his twitching scowl while he counted backwards from ten. As he calmed down, the feathers stopped. The pique didn't.

"I'm supposed to find something in Kragero?! As in the home of Kragero University?! The whole damn town is a front for the Imonoyama branch of the Ninja Union! That asshole sent me into a _den of ninja_!"

"Us," Doumeki reminded him.

"What the fuck!"

The pirate lord ran for a tree towering over the rest, and bounded straight onto one of the highest branches. One of these days, Doumeki might get Shirou to realize that not everybody could jump that high. He wasn't counting on it. In the meantime, he climbed the traditional way. By the time he reached Shirou's branch, the other pirate had gone pale, clutching the tree trunk to stay steady on his feet. His eyes were wide and focused oddly on the town in the valley with its main roads criss-crossing in the shape of a star inside the circle of its outer wall.

"Is that Hibiya Chitose from Ceres?" Shirou was muttering. "And Asou and Kizu from Chevrolet? What the hell are they- ... Hikaru? And Eagle..."

Squinting at his companion, Doumeki pulled his spyglass from inside his coat. "How can you tell who anybody is from that far away?" He'd only ever seen ninja do sight tricks like that.

"... Practice." A flash of red bit Shirou's cheeks as he threw Doumeki a sidelong glance, then went back to getting the lay of the land.

Must have been some pretty interesting practice. Even through his spyglass, Doumeki couldn't get a clear enough view of the people to read individual faces. He could see banners all over town, though, and festival booths in one of the squares, not to mention airships docked on the far side of the city. "Well, the walls are flying flags for Hundhammeren, and for the Daidouji up in Malvek, and there's Ceres. A few I don't know off-hand, but... Is that England?" Doumeki dropped the spyglass and turned to Shirou. "Isn't England one of ours?"

"Mostly. Lord Aoki says they've got one ninja nobody's been able to root out."

"Just one?"

"Are we going to talk about England, or about how Fai just sent the two of us to invade one of the capitals of ninja-dom, while they're having some kind of ninja convention?!" Lord Shirou dropped his face into his palm. "Why does the universe hate me?"

"Did you do something to the universe?"

"Not yet. But I might." With a sigh, he added, "And please don't say, 'At least it can't get any worse.'"

Doumeki shrugged. One of the first things you learned on your way to being a pirate captain was that it could always get worse.

~/~

"Kurogane, would you mind holding this ribbon tight across here?"

Sakura didn't know why Tomoyo had decided to make her a gown today. There wasn't always a reason, and standing still while Tomoyo pinned everything so it fit was something she'd gotten used to doing, but it seemed odd that her best friend would've waited to fit a gown until they'd gotten to Kragero. Tomoyo said gowns were hard, not something to do on short notice. Still, first thing after she'd met with Nokoru-san, Tomoyo had run out to the fabric store for yards of scarlet silk, lace, tulle, beads, feathers... all the normal things she had in color-coded shelving nooks at home, but couldn't exactly travel with.

Now Sakura was trying not to fidget so Tomoyo could get her bodice flat under the ribbon Kurogane was holding. "Umm, Tomoyo? Did you say the University does this every year?"

"Oh, yes! Ninja all around the world look forward to the Kragero Games!" she said, while Kurogane twisted up his lip like he wasn't one of those people. "A once-in-a-year chance to compete with your peers in distant lands for goodwill and glory!" Sakura's friend sighed. "We usually leave it to Lady Yuuko's syndicate in Hundhammeren to represent our country, since we don't run a professional union, but with Nokoru-san ascending to the chairmanship, the Imperial family simply must pay our regards! I have every confidence that you'll do Sor-Trondelag, Malvek Castle, and the Daidouji clan proud. Won't you, Kurogane?"

"You won't catch me in those ridiculous games. I had enough of that bullshit when I worked for the Witch."

"Oh, Kurogane. You're still annoyed about that time you ended up in the beauty pageant and Former Chairman Lady Imonoyama wouldn't let you say that fighting was your talent!" As the black-clad ninja scowled at the furthest corner, ignoring everything the Imperial Princess said, Tomoyo whispered in Sakura's ear, "... so I understand he said his talent was fishing because he couldn't think of anything else, and they brought him a river on stage!"

Sakura blinked at her giggling friend. "But... how?"

"Oh, that's the Imonoyama clan for you! They'll do anything."

Kurogane's scowl cut deeper into his face, the way Tomoyo always warned him would stick if he kept it too long. "Except listen to sense."

Tomoyo caught Sakura in a tight hug, curling her face next to her ear. "But you'll be perfect, I just know it! I can't wait to see you on the winner's podium, Sakura-chan!"

"_Ho~eeeeeee?!_ I'm competing, too?"

"Absolutely!"

"But... But! But I'm not a ninja!"

She was good at running and sports and things like that, and she liked sparring with Syaoran (for Tomoyo's theatrical productions, but she could fight if she had to, even if the Pirate King's crew had been too much for them last month) but the bits she'd learned about far-seeing and super-hearing and flicker-stepping and slipping into shadows and all that had never come easy. There was no way she could compete with the best ninja in the world!

Tomoyo would never think this was a bad idea, so she turned to Kurogane with her panic. He answered with a smile and a calm shake of his head.

"Don't worry, Princess. It ain't that kind of competition. The events're all weird-ass shit you couldn't use ninja techniques for, even if you wanted to. Everybody's serious enough in the field. They come here to play."

With a spin out to the center of the room, Tomoyo clapped her hands under her chin and stars filled her eyes. That was never a good sign. That face meant extra petticoats and bows.

"And I'll be there to record every moment of Sakura-chan's triumph!" she cried, pulling her sketchbook out of nowhere. "Your outfits will look beautiful with gold - we wouldn't want you to clash with your trophies... Just make sure you wear your armband so the judges know you're competing for Malvek, and you won't have a single thing to worry about. It's all arranged!"

Tomoyo was pointing at a scrap of red cloth on table, which looked just like ones Tomoyo and Kurogane were already wearing on their right arms. The armband was a perfect match for the scarlet silk Tomoyo had been in such a rush to acquire, too. Now the sudden fabric purchase made so much more sense! Tomoyo must have wanted to make her a dress in the color they'd been assigned for the games, but she hadn't known what it was until they got here. Although Sakura still didn't know when they'd have a ball that needed a gown.

"Needing" fancy clothes, when Tomoyo was dressing her, was a relative thing.

The door shot open and slammed just as quickly, now with Syaoran clutching the edges of the frame, a panicked grimace on his face. "Why didn't anyone warn me?!" he muttered.

"Syaoran? What's wrong?"

He looked up, and turned so red Sakura was afraid his ears might explode - a fair match for the red armband he was already wearing, actually. She didn't know why Syaoran got so embarrassed when she had one of Tomoyo's fittings. She was the one wearing nothing but underwear and a pinned-together bodice, not him. But after a second, he got himself back together, turning his eyes off to the side as he fought his blush down to a mild glow.

"Umm... It's... well, I knew my mother was going to be here, but... my cousin-"

His face flashed back into a panic, and Syaoran side-stepped the door just in time to miss a girl throwing it open, long black pigtails streaming out of buns on the sides of her head.

"Syaoran! I can hear you, you know! Why would you need to be warned about me?!"

"Meiling!" he hissed, jerking his head at Tomoyo, who was giggling into her hand.

"Oh!" The newcomer made a polite bow, down on one knee with one hand to her chest, showing the indigo armband around her right arm. "My name is Meiling, of the Li Clan of Shenzen. I am honored to greet the Imperial Princess of Sor-Trondelag on behalf of the nation of Xinan, and to thank you for taking such good care of my fiancé during his apprenticeship."

"It's our pleasure. Please, rise."

Sakura felt as flustered as Tomoyo looked composed, looking back and forth between Syaoran and Meiling. "F-fiancé?" she gasped, not sure what to think of her topsy-turvy feeling when Syaoran met her eyes with a quiver of a frown.

Meiling wasted no time in taking a good, long glare at Sakura from the tips of her toes to the unruly bits of hair springing up from when Tomoyo had asked her to take off her dress. The girl laid a hand on her hip. "Syaoran and I have been engaged since we were children. And who, may I ask, are you?"

"Sakura..." She paused, and bit her lip. Meiling had put a lot more in her introduction, but Sakura couldn't exactly add her family name or her home country, since she didn't remember anything before Tomoyo had found her on a beach nine years ago.

"Ward of the Imperial Throne in Malvek," Tomoyo added for her, waving Kurogane away to take Sakura's hand while extending another to Li Meiling. "And my personal friend." As Tomoyo transferred Meiling's hand into Sakura's, they curtsied at each other. "Now, why don't I call for some tea and cake for everyone?"

"Thank you kindly, Your Highness. Please forgive me if I ask to borrow Syaoran for a while instead." Meiling took one last, less arch, glare at Sakura before she smiled at Tomoyo. "I've entered us in the Laundry Washing competition, and it's about to start."

"Oh, well! Best of luck to both of you! Hurry back as soon as you're done, Syaoran."

"Of course, Your Highness."

In the flurry of Meiling pulling him through the door, Sakura caught Syaoran's eyes for just one heart-thumpy moment. She didn't know what he was thinking any more than she knew what she was thinking (she felt pretty confused), but it helped that Tomoyo squeezed her arm.

"It'll be all right," her friend whispered in her ear.

Sakura blinked. "Huh?"

"Nothing! You'll understand someday."

One of the weird parts of having a best friend who could see the future in dreams was how sometimes she said things that wouldn't make sense until weeks or years later. That was Tomoyo for you. Sakura managed a smile, trying to shrug off all the strange jitters from seeing Syaoran leaving with Meiling.

"Did... she say they were washing laundry?"

From the corner, Kurogane groaned. "Like I said, all they do here is weird-ass shit."

Which didn't explain anything about how you could compete at _laundry_.

~/~

Through the glass floor of the Chairman's airship, the _Cygnus Null_, Suoh watched a few laundry competitors pile their sheets from the tubs into their carts and sprint for the drying field, while others who'd chosen to fill their carts of dirty laundry to the brim instead of using the grab and dash method took over now empty spots at the tubs. Hitting the right balance between speed and weight was essential for an endurance challenge like this. Right now, it was anybody's game. He and the other judges wouldn't even take the field to count clean sheets until after they'd been hanging long enough to be certified dry.

They'd compiled data on the last ten years of laundry competitions to determine exactly how many total sheets they could expect their entrants to clean, how much soap they should expect to need, how much water to keep heated in the washroom reserve, how much line and how many clothespins to provide, and then Suoh had personally multiplied all those values by exactly 1.15 to ensure that no one would run out, while simultaneously ensuring that post-competition clean-up wouldn't be too onerous. The Chairman himself had designated the most efficient way to lay out clotheslines so that clean sheets were easy to match to the correct ninja. Imonoyama Nokoru could design that kind of organizational pattern in his sleep, perfectly optimized so that every competitor would find their next drying line without needing to think - there would be no confusion over where to go, no competitors in each others' way or mixed up, and no one would find their best laundry washing pace slowed by deciding where to run.

Everything was perfect.

More than that, the carnival games, fortune tellers, and souvenir booths had gone up without a hint of trouble; the challenge arenas were fully equipped and staffed for any ninja who decided to have a friendly sparring match; and materials for every main event to come had been determined and stored with just as much efficiency as materials for the Laundry Washing competition. Their entire festival was blissfully on schedule and utterly without crisis.

Suoh assumed that, given the absence of any visible problem, something unanticipated would undoubtedly go wrong. He made a mental note of five locations that were accessible but not in the way of foot traffic that would serve as places to station emergency agents to keep on call. He'd see to those orders himself. A trifle like that wasn't worth the Chairman's attention.

The Chairman himself had left the floor for the airship controls. The blond gazed out the window, a perfectly coiffed model of a gentleman as he posed with his white paper fan. His eyes were particularly blue in this light, and full of determination. His lips, as always, were a little too naturally pink for polite society - Suoh liked to keep them that way. No one they knew was polite.

"Sir," he said as he approached. "Does the final inspection meet with your approval?"

"Indeed it does, Suoh." Imonoyama Nokoru snapped his fan closed, pulling the lever for the hull doors with a smile. Metal plates whispered around the glass and sealed with a thud. "And do we have updated reports from our supply chains for our guests' food?"

"Up to date and accounted for, with no delays."

"Our heads of state are all settled for their introductions?"

"Ijyuin is with them as we speak, to show them where they should stand and to confirm their preferred modes of address."

"Excellent! This may be the most smoothly executed festival in the entire history of Kragero University."

"I think you may be right."

With a few turns of the steering wheel and judicious application of reverse thrust, Suoh steered the _Cygnus Null_ to rest between Fahren's airship, the _Dome_, and Civic's sky fortress _Damocles_. Once landing tethers deployed, their last moment of peace before their duties called would be over. How appropriate that the Chairman sighed as he walked toward the door, seeming to regret the lack of any last minute catastrophes to resolve. Emergencies that absolutely couldn't wait were more to his taste than any kind of order.

Clearing his throat, Suoh said, "There is one last thing."

The Chairman whipped around , eyes brightening. "We finished the agenda, correct?"

"This... wasn't on the agenda."

"But no problems appeared during our inspection! Did they?"

"No, sir. No apparent problems, but..." He looked aside, but felt an embarrassed blush rising in his cheeks anyway. "I prefer to prepare for unforeseen eventualities. If some problem did arise requiring your or my attention such that I didn't have a chance to kiss you this afternoon... that wouldn't be acceptable."

He drew his gaze back to his blond, who wore the mischievous smile he'd fully expected. The Chairman's air of decorum disappeared as the man zipped toward him. Suoh barely had time to pull the lever to shutter the windows before that smile was pressed against his cheek while arms circled his neck. With a chortle, the Chairman whispered, "I know exactly how to fix that," and drew Suoh into a kiss that still made his collar feel hot after a whole two years.

It was still a discovery, feeling how well his hands fit around the Chairman's back and how easily his tongue slipped between two bitten lips. The sound of an appreciative purr coming from the man's throat was more like a dream than reality.

"Suoh... I've got lube in the drawer, if-"

"Chairman!" he murmured. His ears were getting redder by the second. He could feel it.

"You're allowed to call me 'Nokoru' even outside of the _boudoir_."

"... Someone will be here any minute to escort you to the stage."

"That's a whole minute!"

He tried to hide his hint of a grin in a cloud of blond hair. If Suoh met those eyes now, he'd melt, so he focused on that point where neck met collar instead. "After we finish today's festivities, we'll have all night in your bedroom. We'll have proper sex."

As the blond hummed against his lips, Suoh managed to steer their bodies away from the airship's controls (before they triggered the lever to reopen the window screens). "I've told you, sex doesn't always have to be proper," the Chairman whispered. Suoh remembered well how true that was. The desk they'd backed up against was witness to that.

"And I've told you, you can convince me on a case-by-case basis. Which won't happen when you have to meet the heads of our allied nations in-"

"I'm very convincing." Suoh lost focus for a fraction of a second in the sound of the Chairman's breath quickening. He leaned in for another kiss, but the blond skirted him to whisper in his ear, "I'm the champion of the college Debate Club, you know."

After kissing the grin thoroughly off the man's lips, Suoh answered, "Since you were in middle school. I was there." The Chairman seemed content, then, to settle against him, to draw him in. They filled their stolen moment with enough kisses to last an entire afternoon.

Until a third, bright voice called out, "Chairman! Takamura-sempai! They're asking for you on stage!" Suoh jumped three feet away, fighting both the urge to fall into a defensive stance after being surprised and the reflex to blush redder than a tomato with sunburn.

It'd been a blow to his ninja pride when he'd met Ijyuin Akira and learned that a human being existed who could sneak up on him, but at least Ijyuin was still the only one he'd met in the decade since, and at least if there had to be one such person, that person was an ally. He kept training to cover even that small hole in his defenses - though, alas, Ijyuin's stealth had improved to keep pace. His ability to sneak now surpassed reason.

"Akira!" the Chairman replied, jumping from his seat on the desk with no shame, and somehow no tell-tale rumples in his clothes to broadcast the fact that he'd been caught making out in his office. He looked perfect, Suoh thought as he straightened his own shirt. As always.

"Shall we get the festival officially underway, sir?" he asked.

"Let's not waste another moment! Suoh, Akira, follow me!"

~/~

Kamui had never been more worried in his life over having no one try to kill him. He had to assume that every member of the throng around them watching a children's puppet show (where a blond puppet shouted his intention to save damsels in distress while one black-haired and one blue-haired puppet threw rose petals over his head) was a ninja, and more than one had turned a dubious eye at their feathered pirate hats and weathered frock coats, but no one had tried to attack them even once. And who'd ever heard of an actual damsel in distress?!

"I'm confused on so many levels."

Shifting his crossbow on his shoulder, Doumeki nodded. "I think what's happening is they're trying to save the widow's house from her husband's scumbag brother, who-"

"Not about the puppet show!"

The faster he could figure out what Fucking Fai wanted him to do, the better. At least last time he'd had half a map and a story. Today, he had nothing. Nothing but a city full of ninja, some of whom knew him personally. Not all of whom liked him as much as Hikaru seemed to.

As the puppets took their fake puppet bows, trumpets in the distance rolled out a fanfare.

"The opening ceremonies are starting!" some man in a funny hat that hid his eyes whispered to a falcon perched on his shoulder. "Let's go check it out!"

As half the crowd wove through the festival towards the city center, Kamui nodded at Doumeki. The other pirate followed without a word, weaving easily through the crowd. At least if Fai had to send him with backup who wasn't on the Council, the asshat had picked a dependable companion. Before long, they'd found a spot in the main square, behind a roped-off track where - for reasons known only to the demon lords of this fucked up universe - Eagle Vision was running by with a cart of laundry. Racing a girl with a long ponytail and a huge skirt who also had a cart of laundry. Being enough of a shit to notice Kamui and wave as he passed by. There wasn't much Kamui could do but wave back, since he didn't want to attract any attention while _really fucking surrounded_. Doumeki was waving, too, and he didn't even look surprised.

Of course. Because Doumeki was sleeping with somebody from the same union as Hikaru, who'd been half the reason Eagle had given up being one of the best pirates in Autozam for (he assumed) becoming one of the best "ninja" in Hundhammeren. Kamui scowled at his escort. "I'm telling you right now - you can date your ninja all you want, but don't even _think_ about giving up your ship to join them."

"Oh. Is that what happened to him?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I wasn't gonna give up my ship."

"Good."

"Besides, Watanuki's really cute when he complains about the pirate thing."

"And I really don't want to hear about your love life with-" He paused, narrowing his eyes at Doumeki. "Watanuki? Why do I feel like I know that name?"

Doumeki shrugged. There wasn't time to say anything more. Up on the circular stage at the other end of the square, the trumpeters had finished their fanfare. Now they were sinking down on some kind of elevator-trapdoor doohickey, and an announcer was rising in front of them from another trapdoor. Someone had to tell the people who ran this place that there was a limit on trapdoors.

"Welcome!" the man yelled out, amplified by some means (Kamui assumed magic) over the entire crowd. "Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, people of indeterminate age and gender! Welcome to the 117th annual Kragero Games! We've got a few more players on the field than usual this year. Do you want to meet your competition?!"

The crowd yelled something that approximated, "Yes".

A person who couldn't have been more than ten and who suddenly made Kamui understand why the announcer had included "people of indeterminate gender" in his speech skipped (_skipped!_) by with a cart of laundry three times larger than he or she was. How could a person skip while rolling a cart of laundry?!

And why was there laundry? Why?

"All right!" the announcer cried. "Let's see who you get to meet first!" At which point, not only did a lottery machine rise on_yet another trapdoor_ with a drummer beating a drumroll, but a new fucking stage rose out of the ground around the circle. Twelve screen curtains covered twelve sections of stage like this was some demented game show. Kamui pulled his face out of his palm just in time to see the announcer draw a white ball from from the lottery. "And it's Civic! Everyone, please give a warm welcome to His Royal Majesty, Emperor Charles the Thirteenth!"

The crowd applauded (and hooted) as the second screen from the right rose to reveal a large man with white hair standing in front of a white banner marked with six dots in a circle, and flanked by a murderous-looking lady with purple hair. Both of them seemed to be thinking this was far beneath their dignity. Kamui felt for them. He really did.

A royal blue ball came out of the lottery. "Next up - England!" But when the leftmost screen rose, all that was there was a royal blue banner marked with an eclipsed sun. No ninja. Which Kamui found appropriate for a _pirate country_. "Ah... England...?"

"Right here!" someone yelled from the crowd.

No. Not from the crowd. From the path where people inexplicably had laundry carts. It was a diminutive teenager with big glasses and a smile that reminded Kamui unpleasantly of Fai when he was being an asshole. The kid jogged - with a rolling cart of laundry, of course - toward the stage. He jumped up and waved.

"I'm Hiiragizawa Eriol! It's nice to meet you all! Please, come by the laundry field if you want to say hello!"

With that, he jumped off the stage and rolled away with his laundry.

Kamui would never understand ninja. Ever.

At least the announcer looked just as confused as he was. "A-all right, then. Let's move on to..." A pink ball came out of the lottery, and the second screen on the left came up to show a plain-looking old man in front of a pink banner marked with a pair of wings. "Impala, led here today by the illustrious Lord Kudou Shinichirou!"

The yellow ball that came out next went to the screen all the way on the right, with a yellow banner (no shock there) marked with a tree. The person here was a young-looking but gray-haired man, about three feet tall with a five-foot staff, who was buried in robes.

"From the great country of Kia - the one, the only... _Mage Clef_!"

So, the man who'd trained all the most dangerous magical ninja Kamui had ever run foul of. This was going to be a nightmare.

When a purple ball rolled out, Kamui felt a Level Five premonition of impending doom, although he couldn't say why. Then he saw the second screen left of center come up, and recognized both the butterfly on the purple banner and the smirking figure standing in front of it with a long-stemmed pipe in her fingers, utterly unconcerned about the two blue- and pink-haired children chasing a mechanical toy at her feet, or the exasperated young man trying to stop them.

The crowd roared into riotous applause as she waved, and showed no sign of stopping.

"Coming from the city of Hundhammeren in our own Sor-Trondelag, here's someone you all know: The Dimension Witch herself, _Lady Ichihara Yuuko_!"

The Dimension Witch herself.

Three weeks ago, Kamui would have called that bullshit, or at best a hereditary title, because the Dimension Witch and all the rest of the Six Divine Warriors should have been nothing but a bedtime story. Then Kamui had found Clow Reed's picture history that _strongly implied_ this woman was, sense be damned, a 2000-plus-year-old hero who'd travelled to the Heavens, and come back with a terminal case of immortality. She was the Witch, that bastard Sakurazuka wasn't kidding about being the Barrows-guard, maybe Kakyou wasn't a dreamseer but _the Dreamseer_, the trickster Snow Fox was that fool playing at uselessness, Fai D. Fluorite... and if he'd understood right, Sumeragi Subaru - whom Kamui had considered his best friend on the _Dragon of Heaven_ (Fuuma was his best friend in the whole world) - was one of the Heavenly Twins, along with the sister Sakurazuka had killed. Kamui knew he shouldn't care, since Subaru had shared so much with him even though he never talked to anybody, and if it had happened 2000 years ago, that was just a _detail_, right? But to think you knew someone -

He cut off his own thoughts before he got stuck in them. Then noticed, and studied, the weird change in expression on Doumeki's face.

"Are you... smiling?"

The captain of the _Queen Cassandra_ shrugged again. "Looks like I didn't need to go to Hundhammeren after all. It figures Watanuki'd be here, too."

Kamui turned back to the stage, where Doumeki's eyes were fixed on the young man at the Witch's side, now holding the two children's toy aloft while they jumped to reach it. Because _that_ was where he'd heard the name Watanuki before.

"You're dating the Dimension Witch's personal assistant?!" Kamui hissed under the neverending roar of the crowd as it turned into a chant of "_Yuuko! Yuuko! Yuuko!_".

"Apparently."

"You didn't know?!"

"He told me he was a popcorn vendor," Doumeki reminded him.

"Does _she_ know?"

"Yep."

"You could really stand to sound even a little bit concerned about that."

Doumeki's habit of shrugging was rapidly becoming inappropriate. "She said it was fine."

"She _said_. Could you maybe put a note in your ship's log _when you have a conversation with the Dimension Witch_?!"

"It was a personal conversation."

"I cannot fucking believe you. This is without a doubt the worst day in my life, which has been way too full of really bad days."

Finally, the cheering died down as the announcer held out his arms for silence and showed the crowd the scarlet ball he'd pulled from the lottery. "And now, it is my honor to present... in their first appearance at the Kragero Games in a generation... Sor-Trondelag's beloved Imperial clan, the Daidouji of Malvek!" The left-center screen, right next to the Witch's, rose on two ladies in full regalia, standing in front of a scarlet flag marked with a chrysanthemum. "On your left, Her Imperial Majesty Whose Divine Eminence Blazes From Heaven, the Empress Kendappa! And on your right, Her Imperial Highness Who Gazes Upon The Moon, the Princess Tomoyo!"

Kamui didn't recognize the lady standing in the shadows behind the Empress, but he sure as hell recognized Kurogane hovering over Princess Tomoyo's shoulder. And as the ninja scanned the (once again wildly cheering) crowd, Kamui saw those damned red eyes lock in on his own. Kurogane screwed his face into a mix of mistrust and confusion, asking with his expression what the hell Kamui thought he was doing here.

With any luck, the scowl and wave Kamui gave in answer would communicate that this was Fai's fault, and Kamui didn't like it any better than Kurogane did. All he could hope was that Kurogane was too invested in "infiltrating" Fai to tell any of the people running this show that one of the Council of Pirate Lords was in the audience.

Leaning closer to Kamui, Doumeki murmured, "Is that the guy you wanted to punch?"

"Not while standing in a crowd of about ten thousand ninja. People would die, some of them might be us, and I'd never get what I came here for." At least if Kurogane was here, he couldn't be getting into Fai's pants again. And people told Kamui he never saw any positives.

The announcer's next lottery ball was orange. "Ceres!" he yelled, and the screen third from the right opened. Kamui didn't care about the woman in a leather bustier and boots getting introduced as the Queen of Hearts, either. His eyes were on the dragon blazoned on the orange flag behind her. Like most of the pennants, it wasn't the flag of Ceres - those were on stands next to the dignitaries. But it was a design he'd seen stamped on a pile of old books when he'd raided Hibiya Chitose's fortress, and back then he'd wondered why it'd seemed so familiar.

Now he remembered. There'd been a book of fairy tales he was reading, Tales of Fallen Valeria. That dragon had been drawn at the beginning of one of the stories. He could still hear Fai's voice, and could recall how he'd jumped when the jackass had appeared over his shoulder and said, "Ooh, the Wizard of Ceres, huh? I love that one." Then he'd whispered in Kamui's ear, "He was actually the Snow Fox the whole time!"

He'd screamed at Fai for half a day for being the kind of asshole who gives away the ending before Yuzuriha managed to stop laughing long enough to tell him the story never said that. Then he'd screamed at Fai for being an asshole who told lies.

He should've been calling Fai an asshole who didn't tell enough of the truth. If anybody would've known the Snow Fox and the Wizard of Ceres were the same person, it'd be the man himself. Kamui didn't know how to feel about the man who was now the Pirate King having that much of a history with one of the more major ninja holdings.

Doumeki gave him a worried look. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," Kamui answered. "Just fine."

But his mind was spinning in circles too fast to think as yet another screen revealed a man in front of a lightning-marked gray banner and the announcer named him Lord Asahi of Chevrolet. What did he care about ninja from the other side of the planet? He vaguely noticed that, "Our host today here at Kragero University, Chairman Imonoyama Nokoru!" was the blond who'd been the subject of the puppet show, even flanked by blue- and black-haired assistants as he stood in front of his golden banner - marked with a five-pointed star that reminded Kamui too much of Subaru's magic circle for him to look at it right now.

The next thing he really, truly felt was his sense of impending doom shooting up to Level Eight while the announcer held up a green ball and yelled, "Coming to us from the distant reaches of Fahren!" A screen on the right revealed a teenage girl in robes of state and an old woman in austere ceremonial garb, their green banner marked with a sakura blossom.

The sight of it made Kamui's shoulders twitch as he silently begged the universe not to let these people be related to the Barrows-guard. Anything but finding out that Sakurazuka had ties here. He could deal with ninja whose ancestors Fai had palled around with back in days of yore, but how could he be expected to stand around letting ninja exist who might be related to Sakurazuka Seishirou? The least the universe could do was spare him that.

"On your left," the announcer said, pointing to the teenager, "Her Royal Highness and Heir to the Lion Throne, Princess Aska!" Then he indicated the old woman, who bowed her head. "On your right, Her Grace and Protectress of the State, Lady Sumeragi!"

Well.

Fuck the universe, if that was how it wanted to play.

Doumeki had barely begun to ask, "Did he say-" before Kamui flashed him a look to cut him off. No matter what else reality did to him, this day would _not_ contain any conversations about Subaru sharing his name with a ninja clan. Kamui couldn't trust his tongue anyway. Not when his every muscle wanted to punch something. It was taking all his focus to keep his power locked down so that an earthquake didn't erupt beneath the square where they were standing.

He had to get himself under control. He had to find whatever Fai wanted him to find. Then he had to get out of this fucking place before it destroyed everything he believed.

Kamui stared at nothing, trying to breathe calmly, barely hearing the announcer say, "From Nihon! The Snow Princess Shirahime!" about a black-haired lady in front of a silver banner emblazoned with a wolf's head. Then one final screen rolled up to show two women in front of an indigo banner bearing a yin-yang. "And last but not least... Our representatives from Xinan! On your left, Lady Li of Shenzen! On your right, Lady Wol Mae of Koryo!"

As a choir of preschoolers filed out in front of the stage, Kamui thought he'd finally gotten command of himself - at least enough to issue orders. He turned to Doumeki, who was waiting silently to hear what he had to say.

"None of this is real," Kamui declared.

"If you say so."

"We've fallen into the Kragero Below and entered a bizarro reality where up is down, right is left, inside is out, and nothing is true."

"Hmm. If nothing is true, and you just said nothing is true-"

"Stop using logic!"

"Right. Or... left?"

"Let's just get out of this crowd. I have a mystery to find, so we can get back to the real world where things make sense."

The other pirate took a long look at his ninja boyfriend up on stage, who looked like he was trying to have dignity filling his mistress's sake cup while the two inexplicable children climbed on his back. It was clear enough that Doumeki didn't want to leave right away, which normally would have been an acceptable request. Still, all these ninja hedging them in were making it hard for Kamui to breathe, and his confusion over all the things he shouldn't have been seeing and hearing only made it worse. But he wasn't going to fucking beg!

Doumeki dropped a hand to his shoulder. Somehow, it calmed Kamui a little, even before the man said, "Getting away from the crowd sounds like a good idea." Seriously, what had possessed Fai to send him with someone this reasonable? It was like he was being _nice_.

"Right," Kamui sighed.

"Left."

"Fuck you."

Which was when one of the people rolling laundry carts - a lady with brown hair to her shoulders and a yellow shirt - stopped right between them on her side of the rope and said, "There you are! Hi, I'm Hiromi, nice to meet you. I've been looking all over for you!"

Kamui pointed to himself. "For me?"

"His Grace the _Can't-Say-That-Word-Here_ King sent you, right? Hop in!" she said, pulling a few wet sheets out of her cart. Kamui started to object, but she shook her head and pointed to the scarlet band on her right arm. "If you run without a competitor's badge, a judge will pull you off the track. But you can ride! The rules say anything you can get away with is fair game. So, hop in. But just you, not him," she added, pointing to Doumeki. "I can't carry two."

Pulling off his hat, Kamui turned to Doumeki to say, "Don't get caught. Don't do anything stupid. When I'm done with this, I'll contact you."

"How?"

"I just will, okay? Go... go see your boyfriend or something." As the companion he'd known was too reasonable to be true nodded and backed off, Kamui climbed on top of the remaining wet sheets with a wince. He looked up at the woman who'd called herself Hiromi. "Just so we're clear, I'm only doing this because none of this is real."

"Our department gets that a lot."

He wasn't sure which was more ominous, the way she said that or the wet sheets she threw over his head before they started racing off to god knew where. Kamui tried his best to think happy thoughts during the trip, like Yuzuriha had taught him. Fuuma and Kotori back home in the castle. Fuuma trying to bake. Kotori climbing trees. Ever seeing Fuuma and/or Kotori again. He was in the middle of a daydream about playing pinata with Fuuma and Kotori, and maybe Segawa, or a few of the other Pirate Lords (not the evil ones) when the cart came to a sudden halt and he tumbled out onto a field.

Covered with sheets drying on lines, of course. It was pretty good cover, actually. With all this laundry hanging around, it was almost impossible to see anybody else.

As he stood, Kamui brushed himself off, put on his hat, and pulled himself up to his full dignity as First Mate of the _Dragon of Heaven_. "So," he asked Hiromi. "What's next?"

She pulled something that looked like a volleyball-sized plush pufferfish out of the pack on her hip. It was far too big to have fit in a pack that small, but that was ninja tech. She probably had a tent, an entire arsenal, and a hot fudge sundae in there, too. With an unsettling smile, she twisted the doll's plush tail and tossed it at him.

"Catch!"

Grabbing the plush out of the air was a reflex. Toppling backwards into a row of sheets was momentum, because the pufferfish turned out to be far heavier than fabric and stuffing could ever be. Seeing a black hole open under his feet as he fell was just the kind of day he seemed to be having, especially since the last thing he saw was Li Syaoran - the ninja who broke his rib last month - blinking at him while pinning a sheet to his line. Then the earth closed over Kamui's head.

Right now, he wouldn't even be surprised if he'd fallen into Hell. Of course, it was pitch dark right now, so he couldn't...

No, he could see. Whatever ninja-seeing shit he'd picked up during that day with Hikaru was working now, too. If he only knew how to turn it off, he would, but whatever reason his eyes had for acting like ninja eyes, he could definitely see in the dark. Unfortunately, this room was nothing but smooth, black walls, so dark was the only thing to see.

First things first, Kamui took stock of what he had with him. Hat. Boots. Sword. Clothes. Rucksack with another half-day of food and the magic communicator he'd plundered from Clow Reed's house of horrors. No plush pufferfish. That had disappeared at some point.

A ding interrupted his thoughts. Facing the wall it'd come from, he found his pufferfish. Well, probably not the same one, since this wasn't a plush doll but a projection of light dancing around on the wall with a speech bubble that said, "Welcome, Shirou Kamui!" As he walked toward it, a slot opened in the wall and a shelf extended from it. There was a plate on the shelf, holding three gelatinous cubes while the wall above blinked, "Eat me!", and a goblet filled with something translucent that very predictably had the instruction "Drink me!"

"Oh, _fuck_ no," Kamui groaned.

This was very possibly worse than Hell.


	2. Things Better Left Unsaid

_**DISCLAIMER:**__ All CLAMP stories were created by CLAMP. Characters have been adapted without authorization or approval, and I am making no profit from their use._

"Let the Games Begin" is the seventh story in my Pirates vs. Ninjas alternate universe, "Fifteen Mokona on a Dead Man's Chest". **Reading the previous stories is not required.** That said, if you would like to read the stories in order to take advantage of the continuity, details are on my profile page.

* * *

**[Things Better Left Unsaid]**

Faced with a festival full of ninja, time to kill, and nothing to get done, Doumeki at least stuck around to see the rest of the opening ceremonies. He hadn't known it was possible to turn a giant balloon into a rose-shaped fountain in mid-air. Apparently that could happen. Too bad Watanuki disappeared out of his part of the stage before Doumeki could say hello, but finding his particular ninja in the massive crowds of ninja couldn't be too hard. There weren't many sneaks who spazzed as much as Watanuki did, and his lover's voice tended to carry.

The announcement board at the edge of the square was probably as good a place as any to start. It'd have a map, he hoped.

It did - standing a foot taller than Doumeki himself, a bright green and gold rendering of the city of Kragero, with its five main streets crossing in the shape of a star - and more besides. For three feet of board to the left, there were sign-up instructions and brackets for each day's main events, some of them filled in and some not (laundry today, an egg drop thing tomorrow, a trivia contest, a beauty contest, a music contest, some kind of mystery event, and then flower arrangements). For three feet to the right of the map, there were brackets for big events that'd take the whole week. The drinking contest and the bonfire ghost story contest both had nothing filled in yet, with notes to see the proctors on how to qualify, but all thirty-two entries for the cooking contest had been printed onto the outermost bracket.

With the name "Watanuki Kimihiro" (him and an "Ijyuin Akira" whom Doumeki didn't know) pre-filled all the way to the finals. He'd seen people favored to win before, but that was...

Evidence that the Kragero ninja had good taste, Doumeki decided. Watanuki had been cooking him dinners and breakfasts and packing him off for the boat with a lunchbox for months now, and anybody who didn't think that man made the best damn food in the world needed their taste buds examined. The things he could do with rice deserved their own religion.

Doumeki smiled at the board with a feeling something like pride, for he didn't know how long. He got cut off before he was done when one of the people with laundry carts (he guessed they were competing) stopped on the track and called out, "Um, Mister... Pirate, sir?" It was a slip of a girl with long hair and a blue skirt staring at him with abject confusion. He supposed the orange band on her arm meant she was from Ceres. "Are you lost?" she asked.

Sweeping off his hat, he walked to the ropes. "Point me at the cooking contest, milady?"

She blinked a few times. Doumeki wondered if there was a magic word he had to know, but at last the girl pointed to a street on the right. "It's in the coliseum, just past the planetari-"

A whip cracked not ten feet away. A blond - Doumeki recalled the announcer saying she was the Queen of Hearts, hard to mistake in her leather top, thigh-high boots, cape, and not much else - had appeared in the way only ninja could. The girl in the blue skirt backed away from the ropes in a panic.

"_Miyuki-chan!_" the Queen hissed. "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean!"

"Y-yes, Mistress!"

Not many people could break into full chase wearing six-inch spike heels. Doing it while cracking a whip took some impressive coordination. Still, if this was a laundry washing contest, Doumeki had to wonder if the dust clouds the two of them stirred up around the cart would end up biting them in the ass when they got where they were going.

"_Faster!_"

"Yes, Mistress!"

Neither of them seemed fussed about it, though, and he had a cook-off to watch. Sure enough, there was a coliseum down the street the girl had pointed to, with twelve portable kitchenettes around a podium draped in cloth, and standing at a stove at the north end was a lanky figure wearing black and fishnet, plus Doumeki's favorite apron (the kappougi, with the full sleeves), calling instructions to the teenage girl behind the counter.

"We're on desserts, so we'll want the standing mixer. Let me know if it's too heavy?"

"It's all right, Kimihiro-kun. I've got it." She cocked her head at Doumeki walking up behind Watanuki, but didn't say a word about it.

"Ah, Kohane-chan, it's such a relief to have you as my sous-chef this year! Last year-"

"Hey," Doumeki said.

In the space of a second, his ninja switched from the sweet voice he'd been using with the girl to the bellow Doumeki found more familiar, screaming, "_My name is not 'Hey'!_" as he whipped himself around. The fox spirit who liked to tag along in inconvenient places flew out of Watanuki's sleeve and pulled them together. Just like that, he and his ninja were against the counter. Watanuki wasn't trying to get away. Doumeki might have tried to kiss him (at three other kitchen units, co-competitors were kissing, so no one could mind), but the parade of reds on Watanuki's face was backed up by a look of real concern in his eyes. When he got calm and sharp like that, not twitching at all, Doumeki knew he wasn't in the mood to be messed with.

So he murmured, "Do I say good luck, or congratulations on your win?"

"Are you fucking kidding me?!" Watanuki said in a tone that managed to be one part growl, one part hiss, and three parts screech, all while staying in a six-inch voice. Not that six-inch voices mattered to ninja, who could probably all hear if they decided to listen in. "Why the- how are you even here?! And _don't_ try to tell me you're docked in the city by some kind of coincidence! Even if I _weren't_ contractually obligated to disbelieve coincidences, we are miles from any kind of ocean, you... you... you-!"

He looked like he was trying to find a way to avoid saying 'pirate' or any potentially incriminating synonyms, so Doumeki helped by cutting him off. "I walked. Is this some kind of popcorn vendor's convention?"

"You _walked_?! What kind of- And _no_, this is not a popcorn vendor's convention! It's the annual-" The ninja covered his own mouth with his palm, taking a wary glance at the girl arranging their kitchen. It was cute how he worked so hard not to spill any ninja business to an 'enemy'. "It's... the annual Kragero Career Fair. It's _obviously_for introducing college students to prospective careers, and not whatever you were thinking. Obviously."

"So you've got a booth for talking people into vending popcorn. Can I see it?"

"What? No! I- _Stop changing the subject!_"

"Watanuki-sempai, way to go!" a female voice yelled from the other side of the stadium. As the fox spirit scrammed to let Watanuki bolt around the counter (arms and legs flailing everywhere, as usual), Doumeki saw four girls walking in the far door, all of them with purple armbands that matched Watanuki's. The one with straight blue hair letting out a wolf-whistle looked like the one who'd yelled, while a smaller girl with a long red braid dashed ahead. Sauntering behind them both were two smiling girls, one with shorter, blond hair, wearing a green skirt, and one with longer, more brownish hair. The black-haired, broad-shouldered ninja man was the one who'd stopped by Watanuki's apartment with Eagle a couple weeks back. Doumeki hadn't caught the guy's name, but nobody forgot a face like that.

Watanuki's spinning limbs landed with him pointing both arms (one over his head) and a knee at Doumeki. "Pay no attention to the man in the feathered hat! He's a method actor from a traveling theater troupe who has taken an oath on his life to never break character, so while he may sound like a pirate, and look like a pirate, and _smell_ like a pirate, he is _not actually a pirate_! Don't let him fool you!"

As the girls approached, the blue-haired one laughed out loud. "You should have said earlier that feathered hats were your kink! We could've hooked you up!"

"_That isn't what I meant!_ Gyaaaaaaaaah!"

The red-headed one bounced to a stop in front of him with her hand held out and an enormous smile on her face. "You must be Captain Doumeki! Watanuki-sempai talks about you all the time." Almost everybody ignored the high-pitched whine Watanuki made as he clutched his hair. His sous-chef handed him a towel, in which he promptly hid his face. "I'm Hikaru, and this is Lantis, and Umi-chan, and Fuu-chan, and Fuu-chan's sister, Kuu-san! Nice to meet you!"

"Oh, Hikaru," he answered shaking her hand. "Lord Shirou's friend?"

Her eyes went wide and sparkling. "You know Kamui-san?!"

"He's my boss."

"You have to tell him I said hi!"

"You can tell him yourself, once he's done with his business."

"He's here?!" She turned in four directions at once to tell all her friends. "Captain Doumeki says Kamui-san came to the festival! Isn't that great?"

The others shared a silent glance, looking not so sure that was the best turn of events, but that was as far as it went. Watanuki bowled into Doumeki a second later with a carton of steaming popcorn in his hand. How he managed to keep that stuff hot and fresh in ninjaspace, but never ever burn it, was even more of a mystery than how ninja everywhere could pull stuff out of nowhere to begin with.

"Here! Eat this, and _don't talk_ because talking with your mouth full is rude. You can sit over there where I can keep an eye on you until this is over. Then there must be somewhere on this campus where I can hide you so you can stay out of trouble!"

"I figured I'd stay with you."

"That would definitely get you in trouble! _Now sit!_"

Well, he wouldn't say no to front row seats and the best popcorn on the planet. Besides, from here he could watch Watanuki's cute butt wiggle in his panic dance without getting hit.

Lantis sat down next to him, giving him a wary eye.

"We're not here to cause trouble," he promised the ninja, and held out Watanuki's offerings. "Whatever he thinks. Popcorn?"

The man, the monolith, nodded silently, taking a handful of popcorn but giving Doumeki the impression that he'd better keep his word. Well, he wouldn't have said it if he hadn't meant it. Anyone who trusted Eagle Vision could sure as hell trust him.

"Watanuki-sempai!" Hikaru punched the air in challenge, and Doumeki's ninja snapped straight to attention. "It's you against me and Umi-chan on desserts!"

The blue-haired girl crossed her arms over her chest with a smirk. "I hope you brought your A-game. We won't let you take this easy."

"Hah! Well, I never do less than my utmost. Let the best _pâtissier_ win!"

The blond one waved to her friends, following the brown-haired one to the other side of the arena. "My sister and I are challenging Magami-san and Akechi-san on the main course," she said, pointing out a woman and a man wearing gold Kragero armbands. "Wish us luck!"

"Good luck!"

As the teams settled into their stations, the same announcer who'd worked the opening ceremonies stepped onto the raised platform in the center, waving to the cheering crowd.

"All right, everyone! Are we ready for the first heat of the first round of our championship, to see whose culinary skills are a cut above the rest?!" The crowd answered with a roar. Handfuls of them even held up signs cheering on their favorites. Doumeki counted 39 for Watanuki at first glance, and 37 for Ijyuin - who, if he had to guess from the cartoons on the signs, was the black-haired one in the chef's hat, standing next to a girl with a bobbed haircut, looking like they were running for a Most Wholesome Couple award. He'd admit he was biased, but Doumeki preferred the kerchief Watanuki had knotted over his hair to the full-on puffy chef's hat. It framed the face better.

"And now for our secret ingre- Wait a moment..." The announcer looked down at an empty kitchenette, marked with a salad flag under a royal blue pennant, next to the spot where Princess Aska of Fahren and a boy in a tasseled beanie had a bowl of arugula ready to go. "Wasn't there supposed to be a team from England in this round?"

"Right here!" From the West Entrance, the same bespectacled kid from the opening ceremonies ran in dragging his (now empty) laundry cart. A skinny kid with long hair and a dress came running behind him, wearing a matching royal blue armband. At first, Doumeki figured that was the end of the one-ninja-in-England theory, but he didn't need long to rethink. Doumeki wasn't good with mystical things like his grandfather had been, but even he could tell the second member of England's cooking team was a construct - not born of any of the six realms, definitely not human. A damn good construct, but a construct all the same.

He had a bad feeling about all of it. In the interest of staying out of trouble, Doumeki thought maybe he'd avoid Hiiragizawa Eriol for as long as he was in these parts. Although, if his eyes were working right, the squirt from England looked like he could have been Watanuki's twin brother, if Watanuki had been a little younger and a lot calmer. Talk about weird.

Hiiragizawa turned to Doumeki and smiled - a creepy, slick smile with his glasses glinting - almost like he could hear the pirate thinking. Doumeki shivered.

Yeah. He'd never have to worry about mixing those two up.

"Okay, all contestants in place? Then let's go ahead and reveal our secret ingredient! Today you'll be cooking with..." The cloth in the middle of the arena fell away to reveal a heap of yellow and red fruit. "Apples! A~and..._begin!_"

~/~

So close! Hikaru thought their bread pudding with the apple and fig bits was actually really tasty, but how could they compete with Watanuki's perfect little fruit and cream tarts in the perfectly flaky pastry, with the perfect homemade whipped cream and the perfect sprinkle of powdered sugar on top? He'd earned that win fair and square. She wished she'd had more time to congratulate him before he'd grabbed his pirate and run off, but she knew how busy he was.

She smiled at Umi-chan as they cleaned up the pan. "Isn't it great that Watanuki-sempai kicked his allergy to pirates? Now he can spend more time with his boyfriend!"

Umi-chan froze for an instant, then wiped her hands on a towel and smothered Hikaru in a hug. "Oh my god, I love you. Never change."

"Huh?"

"Watanuki-sempai's pirate allergy... It's... um. _Psychosomatic._"

"So? It's still good he's over it!" Sex wouldn't be any fun at all if your boyfriend made you break out in hives, even psychosomatic ones. And when he'd pulled Captain Doumeki out of the coliseum, Watanuki-sempai hadn't had any hives or rashes or any of the stuff he'd always said he got when pirates were around (and hadn't they been cute, with Watanuki-sempai dragging him by the collar, and Captain Doumeki munching tarts like they were the best thing ever).

Fuu-chan walked up smiling despite her and Kuu's apple-glazed chicken losing out to the Kragero team's stuffed pork loin. That one, at least, had been a close call - even though Akechi-san was Ijyuin-san's uncle, and his whole family were great cooks. "Should we all meet in the food court around dinner time? I have to take the preliminary quiz for the trivia contest."

"That sounds perfect," Umi-chan answered. "I'll run off to audition for the music contest. Hikaru, you've got tryouts for the ghost stories, too, right?"

"Yep! But Eagle's next door washing laundry right now, so I figured Lantis and I'd go cheer him on for a bit first."

Lantis was at her side as soon as the judges signaled that non-competitors could enter the arena, and they all set off for the West Entrance, making bets on whether Watanuki-sempai or Ijyuin-san was going to win their annual showdown, and trying to figure if anyone could challenge the Duklyon boys for third. They were almost out the door when Fuu-chan and Kuu-san's opponents flicker-stepped in front of them, and they all had to forcibly restrain themselves from drawing weapons. This was a festival after all. People mostly kept their ninja techniques to themselves, to keep anybody from having a misunderstanding that might turn bloody, but not having misunderstandings meant not being provoked as much as not provoking.

"Sorry, we didn't mean to surprise you," Akechi-san said. The doctor held up his hands, eyes friendly behind his horn-rimmed glasses. "Tokiko-san and I wanted to catch you as long as you were all here together."

Magami Tokiko-san's black hair fluttered in a breeze that came out of nowhere as she stepped up. Hikaru made a note not to underestimate her if they ever did get in a fighty situation. Run-of-the-mill ninja nurses didn't generate aesthetically convenient wind. She reminded Hikaru of something or someone she couldn't quite place at the moment, actually. But she'd remember if it was important! And this lady had a really pretty smile, too! Hikaru smiled back, since nobody seemed to be attacking.

"We're with the committee to select entrants for the beauty pageant. Ryuuzaki-san, Lantis-san, you're our finalists for Hundhammeren and, well..." The two Kragero ninja laughed as Umi-chan and Lantis raised eyebrows at each other. "Shall we flip a coin again?"

Lantis held out his hand without a word. He had his, '_Let's get this over with_,' face on. Akechi-san handed him an official coin-flipping coin with the Imonoyama crest on one side and a pufferfish on the other. With a shrug, Umi-chan called, "Heads," while Lantis spun the coin into the air, caught it, and slapped it onto his other arm.

Hikaru giggled at her _su~uper_ hot boyfriend's grimace when he saw the star, then pulled him down so she could kiss his cheek. "Congratulations, _Mr. Hundhammeren_." The committee's decision was absolute. Eagle was gonna be so proud.

"Oh, relax," Umi-chan told him. "I'll get it next year. Now are we going to watch people washing piles of sheets in giant vats, or are we just gonna stand here?"

~/~

There were days that were bad, Kamui considered as he hopped off one steam engine making its way around the giant chessboard that'd popped out of the floor in this godforsaken darkness and onto another. Then there were days that were inexplicably bad, and then there were days when projections of dancing pufferfish told you to solve logic puzzles or risk falling onto a floor that released ridiculously painful electric shocks. In a sane universe, there wouldn't ever be days like that, but this wasn't a sane universe. This was his life.

He'd checked the gelatinous cubes and the milky liquid for toxins before he'd ingested them, so he was pretty sure this wasn't a pre-death hallucination. Evidence pointed to them being magic, since after he'd eaten and drunk, a life-size projection of his body had appeared next to the pufferfish, showing his internal organs and blood vessels along with readouts for his pulse, breaths per minute, and five other statistics (and why anybody would need that, he didn't want to know). Then had come the chessboard - with squares as wide as he was tall, topped with two trains running lazy circuits at first, sparks jumping between their wheels and the ground - then the white rabbit holding a watch had risen just past one of the bishop squares.

Because of course there was a white rabbit holding a watch.

At any rate, he could take a hint, and balanced on the engine of the first train until he could step to the engine of the second train, stepping off of that when it passed the rabbit, at which point three things happened: the rabbit printed out a card that said, "Make", the two trains broke into three running at a slightly faster speed, and a blue caterpillar statue rose up next to a knight's square on the other side of the board. The caterpillar's card had said, "a wish", and oh if Kamui had been the kind of person whose wishes came true, he wouldn't have been balanced on the nose of a hurtling locomotive, about to make the sixth of nine train changes to get from the smiling cat to the mocking faces of Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee.

The eight rounds of this game he'd cleared so far had won him a deck of cards that read, "Make a wish, count to three. Pass the tests..." - plus a growing facility with stepping from one speeding object to another without losing his balance, for all the good that would ever do him in the real world. As the train he was on neared the path of the train he needed to step to next, Kamui balanced on his toes, and combined the motion of stepping with a sideways push. If he did it right, he could match his body's momentum to his destination. No jolt when his foot committed to metal, no wobble throwing him to the floor. Just a tight, lightning fast step, which used different muscles than his normal leaps and bounds.

He was going to be sore as fuck in the morning.

Kamui's current train was a two-car deal rocketing from one edge of the third row to the other, and back again, in a four-second round trip. The last train was just an engine, no trailing cars, running in a circle from the king's square to the king's rook's square, then across the pawns' row to start again. He rode the whole cycle three times to be sure he had the timing right. It wasn't easy to propel himself in a split second from flying left to flying right, but he didn't falter, and even managed to disembark on the Tweedles' statue on his first ride around.

It printed a card that said, "And". Kamui had a strong urge to set it on fire.

As one of the trains that still had two cars broke into singles, bringing his train count to eleven, all the engines changed to new courses and kicked up to a yet higher speed. The statue for his next destination rose. Behind the black king's bishop's square back on the other edge of the board, there was now a gangly, gray creature he didn't remember from any version of any Alice stories, but who actually gave a shit? Not him, not right now. The trains were whizzing so fast, trying to plan his route was a nightmare. He could barely track them all, and certainly didn't have enough brain power left to think this through. But as long as he could ride one, study where the next was, and take this one step at a time-

The wall over the gray statue started counting down from thirty. Because suddenly he had a fucking _time limit_, and he had no intention of learning what the hell happened if it ran out. Kamui shifted to his first train the next chance he got. His next three switches weren't pretty, not having time to plan. He nearly fell once. By the time he reached the statue, though, he'd got his sea legs under him at last, leaping from one train to the next by instinct. His feet hit the statue's base just as the timer hit zero, and all the trains screeched to a halt and tipped over.

The floor erupted in a shower of sparks he was all too glad not to've been part of. When they righted themselves, he finished the twelve-car trip to the raven on the writing desk behind the white queen's square well within the twenty seconds allotted. The thirteen cars he needed to traverse in ten seconds to reach the mock turtle behind the black queen's square were racing so fast, all he could see were blurs, but he made it with three seconds to spare and a lunatic cackle. He was starting to get the hang of this.

Then he read what the last few cards he'd collected said. "Pass the tests... and you'll go free." Kamui's laughter turned into a snarl. As if anyone could keep him here the minute he decided this farce wasn't worth his time. And he'd been moving so fast, time felt like mud while he waited for the next target to show itself.

A Jabberwocky statue rose up. Behind the black queen's bishop's square.

Just one square over from where he was right now.

Kamui looked at the now-fourteen trains that were little more than lines of motion, that would take him on a circuit of the board and back again, and used his quick-step push to clear that one-square distance instead. Fuck the trains. The Jabberwocky handed him a card that said, "To", and Kamui readied himself for the next statue.

This one was a white rose half-painted red, behind the black queen's rook's square. Just two squares down, like it was taunting him. Without thinking, he took the dare, rocketing off the Jabberwocky's podium toward the rose, and was still reeling from his surprise that he'd made it when a dodo bird statue appeared behind the black king's square. The ledge to land on was small, no more than three inches across, or he might have tried a long jump on that distance. But his feet had developed a habit now, and while he focused on his end point, he stepped, and his destination appeared under his feet. Four squares in one step, he thought as he took the card the dodo bird printed. Four squares, a distance four times his own height, in one instant.

This fucking game had taught him how to flicker-step. Like a ninja.

Fuck.

As much as he wanted to turn the board into a crater, he wasn't ready to risk dying in the electrical fury it'd cause - not when there was still someone somewhere he could make pay, and he hadn't even found that person yet. A person who was quickly rising in Kamui's estimation to 'nearly as annoying as Clow Fucking Reed'. He growled his way through reading the cards again, including his newest acquisitions.

"Make a wish, count to three. Pass the tests, and you'll go free. To open the door..."

He looked up to see a doorknob with an oversized keyhole rise up behind the white king's knight's square on the other side of the board. Those were all the words he had on the cards, but the rest of the rhyme was easy enough to guess.

"To open the door, _find the key_."

Well, if someone could trick him into flicker-stepping four squares, he could damn well flicker-step eight on his own terms. Ignoring the seventeen separate train engines whistling around the board, Kamui let out a roar and shot himself forward. He appeared on the ledge in front of the doorknob. Reaching for the statue, he fractured the stone with an unleashed bolt of power and yelled, "Whoever's watching this - I know you're there! How about you open this up before I blow it up, and show you _how much I hate riddles_?! One... _Two_..."

Behind the white queen's bishop's square, a pig statue's jaw hinged open and a key flew over. Kamui grabbed it out of the air.

"Now that's more like it."

The tiny room past the door that opened when he turned the key was a plain white, just as bright as the previous room had been made of darkness (and chessboards from hell). When the door closed behind him, the wall was completely featureless. It was as if the portal had never existed. There was no way out that he could see.

"Okay, what's next?! Take your best shot!"

Finally a segment of the wall flipped. It clicked into place with a one-piece black bodysuit hanging from a peg, and plain black shoes on the floor. A black dialogue box blinked next to them that said, "Wear me!"

After all he'd done, after his threats (which he'd thought had worked), after everything... there still wasn't anyone here he could yell at. Or who could answer questions. It was like this was all according to someone's evil plan, and nothing he'd done had even gummed the works.

Kamui sank into a heap against the wall, burying his face against his hands and knees. He'd earned a rest, hadn't he? And after he'd spent a few minutes (or seconds, maybe, since he had nothing to count time but the beat of his heart, and that was racing) with his eyes closed, seeing nothing, saying nothing, not giving whoever was doing this the joy of seeing him jump to their commands, he pulled the magic communicator he'd won fighting Hikaru from his bag.

For him, Clow Reed's communicator orb had turned into a writing pad on a thick block of wood. Even though the_Dragon of Earth_ was far from Kragero - much farther than had ever been within the communicator's range before - Kamui dashed off a note to Fuuma. He had to do something or he'd lose his mind.

"Dear Fuuma: I hate everything," he wrote. "Why can't I be where you are?"

The paper folded itself into a dragon and flew off, dissolving as it reached the wall.

He didn't expect a response, but just writing it made him feel a little better. Even the goddamn feathers that fell out of nowhere whenever he lost control (or used this communicator thing, so now they were extra thick falling in a fluffy pile all around him) didn't seem so bad at the moment. At least they were a familiar annoyance. Kamui rummaged in his pack for a chunk of bread to eat. With some food in his stomach, he'd feel more human, and then he could handle whatever the fuck these ninja assholes and Fai the Feckless had to throw at him.

Then, as he chewed, he saw the best thing in the entire world.

Brown ink letters forming on his magic pad of paper. Fuuma was writing back to him from wherever the Dragon of Earth was sailing right now! The neatly written lines read, "Because where I am is full of sociopathic jerks, which doesn't usually appeal to you. Where the hell are you right now? Is it really that bad?" The last sentence scratched itself out, and Fuuma wrote, "What's going on?" instead.

Kamui picked up his pen, so happy he could cry. But he wasn't crying, he swore. The drips falling on the paper were just sweat from running all over a chessboard at ridiculous speeds. And Fuuma didn't need to know he was dripping anyway. He scratched down, "I'm in some kind of fucking secret training ground run by sadists under Kragero. If I die in this Wonderland-themed hellhole, I'm counting on you to kill Fai for me. It's all his fault."

"And I'm counting on you not to die, but it's a deal. Hang in there."

"I love you," Kamui wrote, because it was one of those things he liked to tell Fuuma before he stood up to strange and deadly ninja menaces. He waited for the usual, '_Do what you've got to do, I'll watch your back_,' sort of answer, but this time the page stayed blank. He didn't think the connection had broken. The paper turned to dust when that happened.

Maybe Fuuma was starting to notice that Kamui wasn't sure that Kotori was the one he was in love with. God knew the tabloids spent three columns every issue wondering why he hadn't proposed to the Princess yet. Because he did love Kotori. But maybe Fuuma had noticed it wasn't that simple, and wasn't interested in poaching his sister's presumed boyfriend, but didn't want to say so because he couldn't think of anything that'd make things more awkward between the three of them.

In a heavy, deliberate hand, Kamui put down, "You're the best friend ever."

After another pause, while Kamui willed the paper to still be working, his heart beating like a loose sail in a storm wind, the words started again. "Kotori and I will always be here. I -" One more second of Kamui holding his breath, and Fuuma's pen scratched out the first person pronoun to revise it. "We love you, too."

For that, Kamui thought he could survive anything. Even a ninja festival.

Even the falling feathers that'd now piled up to his ankles, on their way to his knees.

~/~

Stepping away from a laundry line, Suoh took one of the white feathers that'd begun raining out of the sky. He would have remembered if anything like this had been scheduled, or even proposed. It wasn't interfering with the festival, but it was unexpected. And inexplicable.

Suoh didn't much care for the inexplicable.

"Another of the Chairman's displays?" one of his fellow laundry judges asked - the court crier from Malvek, according to his file. "The Imonoyama really pull out all the stops, don't they?"

With a calm smile, Suoh lied. "The Chairman does enjoy things like this. Rose petals, usually, but I'm sure he had a reason to use feathers instead."

In reality, there were very few reasons for a shower of feathers. The Chairman might have imported an enormous volume of loose plumage without anyone on his staff, including Suoh himself, noticing that he'd done it - but that was the sort of thing he did for surprises. The Games and everything to do with them were no surprise, and this moment was hardly a focal point of the event worthy of one of the Chairman's grand gestures. Suoh supposed he couldn't rule out a natural occurrence, but that was unlikely as well. For this many feathers to fall at once, he'd expect a flock of birds to drop with them. Unless his memory of birds failed him, every single one of these feathers was a secondary plume from the wing of a pure white ptarmigan. The thousands falling just where he could see would require vast swaths of birds to have spontaneously moulted half their wings at once. 'Unlikely' was an understatement.

If the Chairman hadn't done it, and there were no flocks of birds to be seen, the remaining possibility was that someone else had done it. If so, someone had set up a frankly enormous payload and a delivery mechanism without Suoh noticing it, on his campus. For the sake of his sanity, he hoped - hoped, but didn't expect - that the Chairman would take responsibility when Suoh next had a chance to speak with him. In the meantime, he'd ask one of his units of security officers to recheck every corner of the campus. Discreetly.

A light wind blew ripples through the sheets on the nearest line, leaving gaps where he could see through to the next row. Through one of the gaps, Suoh saw an all too familiar purple-haired man staring straight at him, eyes glinting like cold steel. The Civic armband looked particularly stark against his navy blue sleeve, as if he'd bleached it to something more blindingly white than the soft floral white specifically selected by the Chairman to be warm, inviting, and complementary next to nearly all colors of clothing. That man might have done it, too.

Yudaiji Idomu.

If only the Chairman would let him bar that louse from the town, or search him when he came through the gates, or anything of the kind. But they were, alas, a just and forgiving city. His orders were to leave Yudaiji alone until the man did anything that required intervention. Scowling across the rows of laundry, Suoh went back to tallying clean sheets.

"What's that face for?" the other judge asked. "Aren't you having fun?"

"I'll have fun once I've prepared for all eventualities."

"Prepare for what? You've already done so much. It's amazing how well organized this whole festival is. What could possibly go wrong?!"

Suoh said nothing about ensuring that whatever plan Yudaiji had _this time_ to shame and kill the Chairman would fail. Instead, he considered explaining how one should never ask what could possibly go wrong. Ever. The words were barely on his tongue when the light wind blowing across the field broke into a roaring gale, whipping more than half the sheets into a whirlwind. A net launched by one of the trebuchets on the city walls caught the flying sheets, of course, but credit for them was lost to the competitors. If you couldn't protect the work you'd done, you didn't get any points for it.

The wind was gone as fast as it had come. It had the feel of magic all over it, and all of the ninja on the drying field looked equally bewildered as they tried to grapple their laundry - even Yudaiji - without a hint of who might've done it. Everyone knew that any stolen advantage anyone could get away with was fair game, and it was up to the entrants to interfere if their competitors tried to cheat, but that was the most blatant attempt Suoh could recall from any Games he'd heard of, let alone attended.

"Time is up at sunset in five minutes," he told the official at the tally table. "Let the competitors hold their laundry in place if there's another gust. Other than that, stick to the plan. I'm going to find the Chairman. When you know who won, we'll be at tonight's Ghost Story contest, and I want to know immediately."

"Yes, sir."

Suoh flicker-stepped across the rooftops to keep from alarming any of their guests on the ground, and found the Chairman exactly where he was supposed to be - thank goodness. He'd finished judging the auditions for the music contest, and was about to leave the concert hall to see that the bonfire was properly begun. The blond noticed him immediately, nodding toward a shadowed corner where they could meet without attracting attention.

"That's not a festive expression, Suoh. What happened?"

"Particularly obvious cheating in the laundry competition, sir."

A bemused sparkle overtook the Chairman's blue eyes, bright even in the darkness. "Cheating, Suoh? We have ninja here from every corner of the globe! Well, a representative sample of all corners, given that corners on a globe only exist as an abstraction taken to infinity. But the point is, of course someone's cheating! What else would ninja do?"

"This cheat didn't strike me as sporting. I have a bad feeling about this."

"Far be it for me to discount your bad feelings. You're looking into the situation?"

"Of course."

"Then what could possibly go wrong?!"

If anyone else had said that just then, Suoh would have scolded them. Because it was Imonoyama Nokoru, he only sighed, and tried not to smile too much when the ever so charming bane of his existence kissed him on the cheek. Because the Chairman knew how much he hated those words, and he knew how much the Chairman loved trouble.

"Chairman, please allow me to see you're safely escorted to the bonfire?"

"That sounds lovely, Suoh."

~/~

Enjoying a roaring bonfire complete with toasted marshmallows wasn't as easy as Doumeki liked when the only person here he wanted to see was spending the whole time terrified that they'd get caught together by somebody who had a problem with it. Most days, he could ignore Watanuki's histrionics, but Doumeki knew he'd accidentally crashed into his lover's professional life, where there was a real chance someone official might find him _persona non grata_. He wasn't the kind of asshole who made a habit of interfering with his boyfriend's work. Especially when he knew his boyfriend was lying about what he did for a living, and being a pirate at a ninja party was kind of like wearing a prettier dress than the bride at a wedding.

Generally considered bad taste. Likely to start problems if you seek out attention.

He didn't know when Lord Shirou would be done with his errand, but it was starting to look like Doumeki would need a place to spend the night, and he didn't like his chances of getting between his lover's sheets (wherever his room was) when Watanuki was on the clock. Didn't mean he wasn't gonna try. There were no situations where sleeping with Watanuki was going to lose a cost/benefit analysis. Not for him.

Watanuki was in slightly different circumstances, and he could live with that.

He'd never been allowed to understand what his lover did when he wasn't hanging around bars, complaining about pirates, and keeping house. Now he could see it with his own eyes from his spot on the benches, looking up at the platform for the heads of state. Watanuki wasn't just any valet who orbited his mistress like a moon as he catered to her whims. They were a binary star, two of a kind. When she bossed him around, if you were looking just right, you could see her watch him like a mother lion watching her cub scuffle with a gazelle.

He couldn't help remembering how that woman had said Watanuki belonged to fate, and Doumeki couldn't take him away from it. Well, he wasn't gonna ask anybody to back down from a fight, but it was his choice if he wanted to stay close enough to make sure Watanuki came out the other side in one piece. Doumeki had lived his whole life knowing what was right and where he was going. Watching his lover berate the Dimension Witch for going through booze and snacks too fast, seeing Watanuki meet his eyes and blush for just an instant before he went back to work, Doumeki had a feeling like this was the first time he'd really known what he wanted, and right and wrong didn't matter. Where he was going wasn't so clear anymore, but he'd bet his life to make sure Watanuki was part of where he ended up.

The Dimension Witch winked at him, and mouthed silently, "It's rude not to listen!"

Right. The ghost story contest. The Empress Kendappa was up on a stage at the head of the fire, narrating some thriller she'd called an old family legend - an uncle or something generations back who'd kept a locked room no one could enter, very Bluebeard, except that he'd never killed his wife. You'd think, given the fame of the Daidouji emperors and empresses, everybody would've heard of this creepy old uncle if he were real, but Doumeki didn't know the story. Like he'd been told, he turned away from Watanuki to give the bright-eyed Empress dripping in red silk the proper attention. You didn't argue with mother lions.

The audience gasped as Empress Kendappa described a thud ending the sobbing and scratching sounds coming from the locked room (which the uncle had called wind through the rafters, like anybody believed that), leaving the house in silence. The storyteller curled her lip in a hint of a smirk. "But no matter how many people asked to see inside the room, he kept the only key on that chain around his neck, and never shared it with a soul. Until... years later... their kingdom fell into civil war. The old king was slain on the field at the hands of his enemies, breaking their world in two just as his sister had prophesied before she disappeared. His family mourned him, laid him in the ground as all families do, but even they could not honor his command to never open the Locked Room. Before the first sun had set on his grave, they took the key they had pulled from his neck, and they climbed those steep, curving stairs to the highest hall in the East Tower - the room that had now been silent for so long. They opened the door.

"With no light but the torches they'd brought, they saw little at first. Two beds in the corner, long unused. A broken table, with the plates from a long-past meal scattered on the floor. A feather dark as midnight lying on a discarded book under the window. It wasn't until they closed the door behind them that the woman's skeleton fell out of the shadows and they saw the long scratches of her fingernails around the knob on the door, stained red with her blood - and years though it'd been since the young prince had seen his aunt, he still recognized the tattered rags the skeleton wore as a dreamseer's robes. She was none other, he declared, than the old king's sister herself, locked away here for all those years she had been lost.

"As they approached the body, however, the shadows revealed one... last... thing. Above her skeleton, there was a note scrawled on the wall in letters a foot high, perhaps in ink, perhaps in age-darkened blood. It said, 'Dear Father - I couldn't save Mother, and nothing will save you.' Although, search as they might, a second body was never found." The Empress blew out her candle, leaving her face in shadow as she stepped down. The onlookers burst into applause.

"That's not what the prophecy was," someone murmured by Doumeki's ear. He hadn't even noticed the guy sit, and he couldn't see an armband to say where he was from. Just dark hair, plain clothes, and a grin.

"She said it's an old story," Doumeki answered. "That happens. Who are you?"

"Oh, nobody. Stay sharp, loverboy."

Nobody, his ass. But he let the man walk away, and tried to commit his face to memory.

On stage, the announcer stepped out front. "And to follow up that harrowing scare from Her Imperial Majesty... Representing Nihon - Nayuki Satoru with his tale, 'The Wandering Spirit!'"

The pale kid who came up next, holding a freshly lit candle, had a certain strain to his smile that spoke to a lack of confidence that he could beat the Empress. All the same, he took a game breath, and launched into his bit with a practiced storyteller's voice. "They say that every school has seven mysteries, and most are never more than myths..."

Yeah. Poor kid had bad luck on the draw. He wasn't winning this one.

The next person to slip in by Doumeki's side, he noticed immediately. Like he'd miss seeing Watanuki holding out a tray of smores fixings. Doumeki stole a marshmallow and popped it right in his mouth.

"You won't even wait long enough to cook your food before eating everything in sight?!"

"Can you stay, or do you have to go back to your boss?"

"I suppose I can spare a few minutes to keep an eye on you. But I'll-"

Watanuki's mouth tasted like ire and milk chocolate when Doumeki kissed him. The ire melted fast. The chocolate was nice and long on the finish. That little groan when their lips broke was, like always, the best part.

"Did I say you could do that, you bastard?"

"Not today."

"Look, I need to get you out of here before somebody catches on to you-"

"If this is a career fair, maybe I should open a Piracy booth."

"You will _absolutely_ do no such thing!" The way his lover could get vocally strident, even in a whisper, never ceased to amaze. "Now if you _insist_ on staying-"

"I'm staying."

"-I've arranged a bunk for you to sleep in. Outside the North gate, there's a thicket, and you'll find a cabin in it. I'll bring you breakfast in the morning."

"Is there a problem with your bed?" As long as mysterious strangers were picking him out for vague warnings, he damn sure wanted Watanuki sleeping close.

"The problem is with you!" Watanuki pointed to the purple band on his right arm. "Registered invitees _only_ are allowed in the dormitory. So unless you want all the leaders of the civilized world up in arms over the sight of your gloomy face-"

"Then how do I get registered?" Doumeki asked.

"_You don't!_ No way, no how! You will take the cabin I have so graciously prepared for you, and you will be thankful for it! Now, Mistress Yuuko is almost out of snacks. I have to go bring her some more, and if I don't see you before you leave..." For once, Watanuki seemed to trip over his own tongue. His face settled into an exaggerated pout. "Just... don't get caught."

"I won't."

Watanuki shoved the tray of marshmallows onto his lap. "Good," he muttered, walking off toward his mistress. "That'll save me _some_ trouble, anyway."

Doumeki smiled. Reading between the lines to hear his boyfriend say he cared was one more thing he'd gotten used to. Not that he'd say no to hearing it straight up someday.

The audience clapped - not for them, for the kid who'd just finished talking about his school's ghost, ending tonight's round - and the attentive quiet around the fire broke into more of a party atmosphere. Off on her platform with the other leaders, Ichihara Yuuko cheered, "Let's break out the booze!" The sound of Watanuki pointing out that she'd been through three bottles of sake already tonight pierced right through the rumble of the laughing crowd. As Doumeki watched, the woman shooed Watanuki off somewhere (he stomped away with his hands clenched in fists), and she joined a parade of ninja world leaders headed for liquor. None of them so much as dissolved into a shadow, so even a person like him could track 'em.

Last time Doumeki had checked, fortune still favored the bold. He followed a block behind the whole way, and when they went into a posh-looking bar, he went right after.

"Doumeki ahoy!" someone greeted him straight off, whom he already recognized as the Dimension Witch from her voice despite not having known her long. She made an impression. She also made every eye in the room turn to her seat at the bar where she was waving. The blue-haired and pink-haired girls from before were dancing nearby, chanting, "Ahoy! Ahoy! Doumeki ahoy!" while table by table the whole rest of the room fell silent.

It wasn't long before all the eyes watching Yuuko-san turned to him, with a feather in his hat, a hook on his hand, and a weapon on his back. Feeling the weight of near fifty top-rank ninja and most of the heads of state in the ninja world staring him down - no doubt wondering why a pirate had wandered into their crowded (really crowded, starting to seem claustrophobic) bar - Doumeki braced himself for Watanuki to jump up yelling that this was exactly the kind of situation he'd been trying to prevent. True enough, that wasn't the kind of entrance Doumeki would've preferred to make. But Watanuki seemed to be somewhere else for the moment. He saw Eagle, Hikaru (on Lantis's lap), and the blond one named Fuu waving from a table to the right of the door, while the girl named Umi was trying not to choke on the Blue Sapphire in her glass; he saw the damsel who'd given him directions earlier, gaping at him as she drank tea with three ladies in lingerie - one with a hat, one with rabbit ears, and one with mouse ears; and he saw at least two wolves, growling from their spots on the floor (a gray one next to the Snow Princess Shirahime, and a black one next to a girl in leather armor).

No Watanuki. Just his boss yelling from the bar, "Show a leg, Cap'n! Step smartly now!"

Doumeki swept off his hat. "Aye aye, ma'am," he answered, and walked up to meet her. Wasn't much point in arguing, he figured, although he wasn't gonna take off his hook tonight.

"Here. Catch." She threw a scrap of purple cloth at him. "That's what you want, isn't it?"

Eyeing the armband, he asked, "What's the price?"

"Paid in full! Consider it your reward for being such a good boyfriend. I put you down as Watanuki's +1 when we registered."

Worked for him. Seemed to work for all the big wigs at the bar giving him needle-eyes, too - being the purple-haired lady from Civic, the old woman calling herself Sumeragi, and Imonoyama's blue-haired shadow, all of them off to the left with their friends. Doumeki let out a breath he wasn't ashamed to admit he'd been holding, and tried not to think too hard about the implication that she knew he'd be coming. "I think I might need a drink."

A younger voice spoke up. "Here, Captain Doumeki. Why don't you take my seat?" Next to the Dimension Witch, Hiiragizawa Eriol was sitting with the same slick grin as before. And, for some reason, a small black cat in his lap. "I've got a long day tomorrow, after all. Turning in early wouldn't be a bad idea. It's been lovely, Yuuko-san. Come on, Akizuki." The construct kid who'd been at the cooking contest kicked off the stool on his other side and ran for the door.

"Don't get into too much trouble, _Eriol_," Yuuko told him.

As he left, Doumeki stared after with an uneasiness he couldn't put a name to. He met Old Lady Sumeragi's eyes mid-glare. She seemed just as suspicious of the Englishman as he was. Good to know it wasn't just him. And he was glad enough the little blue-haired and pink-haired tykes took the chairs Hiiragizawa and his sidekick had vacated, leaving the one on the Dimension Witch's right for him to fill. It didn't feel right taking a seat from the person he couldn't help thinking of as Watanuki's evil twin.

Comparatively, the glare he got from Kurogane on his other side was no problem.

"Hey," he told the red-eyed ninja.

"So you're Watanuki's Doumeki?"

"So you're the Pirate King's Kurogane?"

The ninja grimaced, then waved for the barkeep. "Oi! Bourbon for me and my friend." Then he murmured. "That guy ain't showin' up, too, is he?"

"I think he's going to keep an ocean between him and Death Shirou right now."

"Yeah. His kind of party, though."

The bourbon was perfect - high class stuff - and not so strong that it should've been a problem. It must've been the atmosphere, pulled tight as a knot in a wet rope, then, because twixt that moment and the one when the Dimension Witch's two tag-alongs pointed him through an unmarked door in a dark building, Doumeki didn't remember too much of what happened.

* * *

_**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**__ A quick note on characters who are not clearly male or female, of which there may be a few in this fic._

As a genderfluid person, it's very important to me that these characters are described in terms that reflect how I see them present themselves and how others react to their presentation in the original manga.

1) Since the question of whether **Hana from ****Gate 7** is male or female is kind of a running characterization point, I'm planning to have people refer to Hana as "he or she" during any appearance (such as the unnamed cameo in Chapter 1) with clearly stated confusion from the onlookers about Hana's sex as appropriate.

2)** Akizuki Nakuru**, in this chapter, was more of a conundrum, since the only clear expression of gender identity for this character within Cardcaptor Sakura was an off-hand comment that Spinel Sun makes to opine that a boy's uniform would have been more appropriate for Akizuki. Akizuki's response, that the girl's uniform is better because it's cute, isn't the same as saying conclusively, "But I'm a girl!", and I agree with the general assertion that one can see the character as essentially genderless. That doesn't help much with pronouns. Is this character an essentially genderless person who identifies as female? A genderless person who identifies as male, leading Suppie to make his comment, but likes to wear dresses? A genderless person who couldn't give a flying hoot, and just likes cute things? I chose to make the determination for pronoun reference based on Nakuru's name and speech patterns. The kanji for "ru" in Nakuru can be used for gender-neutral names, which have sometimes been used for men historically, but that name form skews far more feminine in general. In speech patterns, the vocal tonality, use of feminine particles like "wa" to add emphasis to some sentences, and use of the personal pronoun "atashi" all point to a deliberately feminine self-presentation, not someone who likes to wear dresses while having an even remotely masculine persona. As such, I will use gender-neutral language whenever possible, and default to "she" if I need to use a pronoun.

3) If **Kohaku from ****WISH** ends up making a large appearance, I will have to go back to the Japanese manga to check pronouns and speech patterns, but given Kohaku's reaction when Shinichirou uses the term "girl" and the parallelism with Hisui (who clearly presents as male while acting as Kakei in Legal Drug/Drug & Drop) I expect to use as much gender-neutral language as possible to reflect the prevailing sexlessness of angels, defaulting to the pronoun "he" if I need a pronoun (official American localized translator's decision to make all angels into girls be damned - let's not with the default heteronormativity, shall we?).

I think that's all the ambiguous characters who may appear in this particular story. If any others come up, I'll address them at that time. Thanks for reading!


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